the things I absolutely won't sacrifice are organic milk and omega-3 free range eggs.
Everything else I can skip.

my favorite splurge right now
byerleys beer cheese soup.

The truest answer to violence is love. The truest answer to death is life. The only prevention for violence is for the heart to have no violence within it. We cannot prevent evil through any system devised by mankind. But we can grapple with evil and defeat it, but only with love—real love.

Organic Milk-it's the most expensive item of our grocery list, next to 100% virgin/organic/and or imported Olive Oil. we have a really good organic produce store, and are able to buy most of our produce reasonably, so we plan around organics on sale.

We get organic milk, some organic cheese, local whole bean coffee, local beer, cage free eggs, (organic in the summer at the farmer's market), and ice cream. We mostly avoid prepared meals, but we usually have frozen ravioli on hand.

Sadly our grocery bill is not a splurge at all. it really would be so if could buy organic and whoel foods. But we are trying. Little by little to change that
any advice on how to convert slowly.. and not radically expensively?

I think our splurge would be organic butter. WE really like butter in our family. Yummy!

And Dh loves his chocolate, especially chocolate chip cookies, which we make from scratch, but the 2 sticks of butter and the chips up our grocery bill!

I am prepared to buy in bulk and cook everything from scratch (no convience foods) if it means we eat healthy and (this is very important to me) delicious meals.

By the way, we love to eat salmon too and only wild, so when we can't afford fresh, we buy canned. Most canned varieties are wild, (read back of can I think). We eat it in salmon patties. chowders, casseroles, to get the benefits without the mercury. If you are worried about canned, the interior of the ones I buy are lined, so no metal is touching the fish. Just to let you know.

Oh, and this is generally not more expensive, but I do use granulated sugar...

The *only* sugar I will buy is Michigan grown and processed beet sugar. Doesn't matter if soemthing else is on sale, doesn't matter that I end up constantly stalking for sales and end up buying it twenty pounds at a time to avoid having to pay more for it, but I am very particular about this. Just trying to do my bit to keep the beet farmers in the Saginaw valley in business, and one of the few non-automotive related plants alive in an economically depressed area.

Me too! I bet we buy the same kind.

I also splurge on Spanish goat cheese (I am generally intolerant of dairy, but this doesn't bother me and it is SO good with an apple!).

I'm bad, bad, bad. Lately I have been splurging on pretty much everything. I've created a monster in myself by giving myself permission to always buy organic. I don't know if I can ever go back! It feels good to always make the best choices, buy organic, and nourish my family like this. What's funny though, is that I think because I'm going for the more expensive stuff, that in the long run we've ended up saving money because we don't mass consume like we used to. Funny.

We eat pretty much all organic here, but I'm of the opinion that it's not really negotiable. Since I started eating all organic my cronic pain is pretty much disappeared, so for us there is no looking back. I do like to splurge on organic chocolate chips, and organic cookies and crackers for dd.

Sarah married to Micah, mama to dd1 (9), dd2 (7) and ds (2). We love to